WelldeadLink:How does one extract trillions of dollars of platinum and have it be worth only millions?TFA says there would be 300kg, so it's not as if the market has been flooded.

There's trillions of dollars worth of platinum available, but the article says that only 300kg could be successfully extracted and used, which is why it would only be worth in the millions (300kg = 16 million dollars, roughly)

Ramien:WelldeadLink: How does one extract trillions of dollars of platinum and have it be worth only millions?TFA says there would be 300kg, so it's not as if the market has been flooded.

There's trillions of dollars worth of platinum available, but the article says that only 300kg could be successfully extracted and used, which is why it would only be worth in the millions (300kg = 16 million dollars, roughly)

Either that or it's a poorly written article and I missed something.

"It would only take 7 million years to work through all the water on Earth (if we had a pump and processing plant that big). This will certainly introduce some other problems. So, lets be a little more reasonable and say we could process 1 millionth of the ocean (1.3E15 liters) in 7 years, with a processing plant with the flow rate of Niagra Falls (still quite a challenge).

We'd then have about 300 kg of Platinum, with a market value of around $16 Million.

Thankfully, in asteroids similar to LL chondrites and iron meteorites that have been studied here on Earth, the concentration of precious metals like Platinum is a BILLION times higher than the ocean.

Conclusion: While asteroid mining is a big task, its much more tractable than processing enormous amounts of seawater!"

History had a show on last week about what the earth is worth so they were adding up all the gold,silver,platmium and other resources. One of the things they mentioned was how particles of gold are in ocean water and how much that would be. I fell asleep when they got into the trillions of dollars worth of resources.

Why the dumbass tag? The guy points out (correctly) that there's a shiatton of platinum dissolved in the oceans, and that it would take forever to extract it, and that even if you do extract it there would be a very limited return. I am confused...

IvanTheSilent:Why the dumbass tag? The guy points out (correctly) that there's a shiatton of platinum dissolved in the oceans, and that it would take forever to extract it, and that even if you do extract it there would be a very limited return. I am confused...

Well, there isn't a meaningless tag, so I would say that dumbass is the best we can do.

IvanTheSilent:Why the dumbass tag? The guy points out (correctly) that there's a shiatton of platinum dissolved in the oceans, and that it would take forever to extract it, and that even if you do extract it there would be a very limited return. I am confused...

This kind of thing (extracting metal from seawater) has been proposed before, usually for gold. It never pans (heh) out.

Rapmaster2000:IvanTheSilent: Why the dumbass tag? The guy points out (correctly) that there's a shiatton of platinum dissolved in the oceans, and that it would take forever to extract it, and that even if you do extract it there would be a very limited return. I am confused...

Well, there isn't a meaningless tag, so I would say that dumbass is the best we can do.

It isn't meaningless when people throw out "there's platinum in the ocean, we have no need to travel to asteroids to mine it!!" when he has meetings with potential investors.

There are a lot of other minerals we can get from asteroids. Nickel is the biggest, most immediately useful material (We can get that by digging deep into the earth, but it isn't practical,either). Iridium, in large quantities might be useful, too.

IvanTheSilent:Why the dumbass tag? The guy points out (correctly) that there's a shiatton of platinum dissolved in the oceans, and that it would take forever to extract it, and that even if you do extract it there would be a very limited return. I am confused...

Then he goes on to say that concentrations of platinum are a billion times higher on certain asteroids than in the ocean. He works for a start-up space mining company. The dumbass tag is for his implied false dichotomy. The most obvious unmentioned option is that we neither mine asteroids nor extract from seawater, but just continue to mine platinum like we always have - out of holes in the ground.

The thing is, if we want to be out there, we NEED infrastructure first. We need habitats. We need storage depots. We need maintenance facilities for craft. We need manufacturing facilities to make parts and to create facilities on site. We need processing facilities. We need to refine ore. We need to find water, for both drinking and for oxygen liberation. Asteroid mining means a huge undertaking, to create a chain of facilities so that the work can be done safely, and collected safely. It will be worth it, in the end, both the tech that will come from the effort, the resources, but also in just getting free of well. But let's not pretend that it will be easy.

One of my favorite authors is Allan Steele. Working class science fiction, with several nods to Heinlein in his bio, but what I like about him, is that he takes a look at what the reality will be for such miners. Long hours, boredom, not a grand adventure, but work, much like any other industrial project in remote areas. It will take a special breed of crazy. Not strong jawed heroes, but guys who will stink to high heavens, who will put up with shortages and long hours, and boredom, and more. And, yeah, they'll probably be unionized. We will know we have reached the final frontier proper when those miners finally go on strike...

hubiestubert:The thing is, if we want to be out there, we NEED infrastructure first. We need habitats. We need storage depots. We need maintenance facilities for craft. We need manufacturing facilities to make parts and to create facilities on site. We need processing facilities. We need to refine ore. We need to find water, for both drinking and for oxygen liberation. Asteroid mining means a huge undertaking, to create a chain of facilities so that the work can be done safely, and collected safely. It will be worth it, in the end, both the tech that will come from the effort, the resources, but also in just getting free of well. But let's not pretend that it will be easy.

One of my favorite authors is Allan Steele. Working class science fiction, with several nods to Heinlein in his bio, but what I like about him, is that he takes a look at what the reality will be for such miners. Long hours, boredom, not a grand adventure, but work, much like any other industrial project in remote areas. It will take a special breed of crazy. Not strong jawed heroes, but guys who will stink to high heavens, who will put up with shortages and long hours, and boredom, and more. And, yeah, they'll probably be unionized. We will know we have reached the final frontier proper when those miners finally go on strike...

hubiestubert: It will be worth it, in the end, both the tech that will come from the effort, the resources, but also in just getting free of well. But let's not pretend that it will be easy.

Things worth doing are rarely easy.

I'm pragmatic. I see it as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Look at all of the things we'd need to mine asteroids - it's all just off-Earth habitat and manufacturing. Space mining is just the carrot that entices us to go and do it.

/besides "for the lulz", of course, which is kind of why we landed on the Moon

AFAIK, there's nothing outside of our gravity well that is economically worth bringing back to our gravity well, unless there's some vein of antimatter to mine.

The only reason to extract minerals in space is to use them in space. And at that point "market value" is meaningless because there isn't a space nutter commodities exchange yet. I'd set one up just for laughs but I think the SEC would have an issue with it.

Basically, the idea goes that you set up a mining and refining operation, then you can build huge solar collectors to beam energy back to earth, with the end goal of moving most of the dirty industry space side. Basically the environmentalist wet dream. Plus, with all the robotics and automation needed to make it work, we could be well on our way to a more relaxed, star trek style life style. Plus, its the the kind of r&d, economic stimulant you'd need if say, you wanted to cut military spending without tanking the global economy.

The risk is that if something happened to the spaceside assets, you risk a total breakdown of civilization and a return to utter barbarism. Plus, anyone with a hidden industrial core could dominate the rebuilding from the shadows.

Scary stuff, but what with depletable resources and the gathering storm, is the current course of civilization any better?